Internet, cellular communication systems, television, newspaper, etc., provide diverse communication media channels through which people may receive information and/or communicate with each other.
For example, telephone systems allow users to conduct real time two-way/full-duplex communications in voice. Traditional land-line based telephone systems connect one telephone set to another through one or more switching centers, operated by one or more telephone companies, over a land-line based telephone network. Traditionally, a telephone connection is based on a circuit switched network.
Current telephone systems can also use a packet-switched network for a telephone connection. A packet switched network is typical in a computer data environment. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) allow the delivery of voice information using a packet-switched network, such as the Internet, in which voice information is packaged in a digital form in discrete packets rather than in the traditional circuit-committed protocols of the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
Cellular networks allow a cellular phone to connect to a nearby cellular base station through an air interface for wireless access to a telephone network. Wireless telephone systems allow not only voice communications but also data communications. For example, cellular phones can now receive and send short messages through a Short Message Service (SMS). Web pages can now be retrieved through wireless cellular links and displayed on cellular phones. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) has been developed to overcome the constraints of relatively slow and intermittent nature of wireless links to access information similar or identical to World Wide Web.
Telephone companies provide services, such as call forwarding. Call forwarding of a telephone system allows a user of a phone at a given phone number to dial a specific sequence on the phone to cause the telephone system to forward incoming calls addressed to the phone number to another specified phone number that is indicated by the dialed sequence.
Click-to-call is another service which allows users to click a button in a web page to request a voice connection to a destination. The call can be initiated from the user side via VoIP, or be initiated via a callback to a phone number that is specified by the user.
Telephone systems are frequently used in conducting business. Telephone numbers are typically provided in advertisements, web sites, directories, etc., as a type of contact information to reach businesses, experts, persons, etc.
The Internet is becoming an advertisement media to reach globally populated web users. Advertisements can be included in a web page that is frequently visited by web users or that returns the result of a user requested search. Since advertisements included in the web pages contain a limited amount of information (e.g., a small paragraph, an icon, etc.), the advertisements can provide links to web sites that provide further detailed information.
In certain arrangements, the advertisers pay the advertisements based on the number of visits directed to the web sites through the links embedded in the advertisements. Thus, the advertisers pay for the performance of the advertisements.
Performance based advertising generally refers to a type of advertising in which an advertiser pays for a measurable event that is a direct result of an advertisement being viewed by a consumer. For example, measurable events for some advertisements are based on the selection (“click”) of the advertisements by the customers to follow the links embedded in the advertisements to the web sites of the advertisers.